Friday, October 9, 2015

In a daily language "experts" are usually people who do something more intense and, preferably, do it for living as opposed to as a hobby or on the side.

"Specialist" is a bit better word in that context and frankly I do not want to go down to semantics as much as I'd like to separate people who develop extensive expertise in a particular area versus all others.

Without being top notch I consider myself an expert in plasma , LCD and LED TV repair due to the fact that i do it a lot and , if anything, my experience and guessing would likely be better than that of an average customer even if I happen not to be the brightest of service engineers out there.

The contents of the article may change after my post, so I'll copy a snippet here without author's permission. I looked for place to comment under the article to tell them what I am telling you, but there was no option to leave comments , so I am instead doing it here.

"This is actually a fairly common problem amongst Plasma TV's. The Y-Sustain Board often times go kaput and you run into the problem of "no picture but still having sound". Everything else seems to work like volume control, changing the channels, and even changing the input from one to next. No problem, you think to yourself. Just replace the Y-Sustain Board and you should be good to go, right? Hold on there, cowboy. Before you go and do that, understand for a moment that Plasma TV's, unlike LCD TV's and LED TV's, is a different type of TV technology and thus, the way it operates is also different. If and when "a part goes out," it works in a domino effect. In other words, when one board goes out, it often times takes out another board with it.

In a Samsung HPT5054, it uses this Y-Sustain and Buffer Board set: LJ92-01490A & LJ92-01491A & LJ92-1492A. Now, inside your TV, the direction of electrical current travels from left to right and when this set is inside your TV, from where you stand with the base of the "TV Stand opening" facing towards you, it would be from the "bottom up" that the electrical current travels. And in this particular TV model, usually the "short" comes from the lower buffer board (LJ92-01492A) that ends up blowing out the Y-Sustain Board. In other words, when the lower buffer board goes bad, it usually takes out the Y-Sustain Board along with it. And before you go jumping the gun and concluding that maybe it's prudent to replace the Y-Sustain Board and just the lower buffer board without also replacing the upper buffer board as well, this is actually not a good idea. Why? Because if the lower buffer board goes bad and takes out the Y-Sustain Board along with it, it is just a matter of time before the upper board goes bad. And then you run into the same problem except this time, it will be the upper buffer board blowing out the Y-Sustain Board. In this case, it's a lot like how your mechanic recommends that when you replace your tires or shocks and/or strut assemblies, that they should be replaced in pairs, rather than individually because of the same rationale: when one goes bad, it's highly probable that the other one is on its way out even though it appears to the naked eye that nothing seems to be wrong with it. And if nothing else, replacing the Y-Sustain Board together with the Buffer Boards will sufficiently eliminate the possibility that the short was coming from the upper buffer board thus minimizing the chances that you would end up blowing out one of the two working boards that you just bought. Ultimately, it saves you time and money to replace them together as a set rather than replacing two of the three only to have one of the old boards blow out on you and taking out one of the two perfectly good board you had just bought a week ago. And these Y-Sustain Boards don't come cheap nor are they easy to find."

While there is definitely some truth to the above, there is also a fair amount of errors and misconception resulting, at the end, in an incomplete at best, and more rightfully misleading conclusion and recommendations.

Here's why:

1) The article builds a case based on one example and fails to review everyday practice for other possibilities.

Samsung HP-T5054 does have a tendency of blowing a buffer board and taking down the Y-Main board as a result, that is correct.

However I can list tens of TVs - practically all Hitachi models I know and most of the LG based ones as well - where this is NOT the case.

HP PL5060N is a 50'' plasma from about the same time when Samsung HP-T5054 was made. It tends to blow the YSUS and the ZSUS boards however rarely ever the buffer boards are affected.
And the buffer boards are practically never the source of the YSUS failure.

So the case of having to replace all 3 boards together goes down the drain from the sake of cost efficiency and even pure technical requirements.

In case of the Hitachi plasma TVs from the same time frame, buffer boards tend to fail a lot - kind of like with Samsung - but they rarely ever affect the sustain board. 1 in 100 or something to that extent.

We highly recommend that people do not replace the sustain board simply because it is not needed.

In short: Y-Main and buffer boards SHOULD NOT always be replaced together.

2) The article talks about the lower buffer board failing on HP-T5054 and specifies it as LJ92-01492A.

That is flat our wrong.

We have about 200 lower buffers L92-01492A available here, result of customers replacing the set of buffers with new ones.

The lower buffer rarely ever fails!

What is the conclusion?

Well, whoever wrote that article is not really a TV service technician. No offense meant.

For my two cents whoever composed the article is fairly intelligent as it is well written (well interpreted from other sources is my exact opinion) and it improvises a bit over the original.

But it lacks what it needs most, which is first hand experience and proper application of logic specific to the issue.

I do not mean to offend the author or the other company in any way.

I want to make a point that one should not believe everything they get from what can be perceived as an expert in a certain area.

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Below is an email correspondence I will post without edits other than removing emails for the sake of keeping privacy.Reading it may not be very easy because of the way Outlook organizes email history, but I want to post it without changes and quickly.To read it properly start from the bottom and work your way up to the top. That is how email history goes. Most readers will not find it of interest, but hopefully PayPal will.

ØYour
terms and conditions imply that you do not want ME to fix the board, not
others.

I disagree with that.

And will quote you the requirements once again:

“We ask that the board arrives here in good physical condition and
without traces of tampering. If someone (other than us, that is) has already
attempted to service the board…”

Not only the statement does not talk about you, the customer, in
fact it explicitly states someone (other than us, of course).

You may interpret the language any way you want, but that is the
reason agreements are read not for what they imply, but for what they say.

And ours most definitely does not say anything about YOU not
having worked on the board.

ØWhat
the prior technician did, and whether or not that constitutes “tampering” with
it, is beyond my lay expertise.

There is nothing wrong with that.

But it is within our expertise, which is the reason we contact
you BEFORE we do anything else.

ØIf I
have my oil changed at Jiffy Lube, do I need to inform the Toyota dealership
that I might have tampered with my car, thus affecting its warranty?

You may want to check your agreement with Toyota about that – I
am definitely not informed enough as to speak on their behalf.

But I am quite sure that there are places and services that will
void original Toyota warranty.

Again it is up to you to know what they are and I am sure
they are in the car’s service terms and conditions.

ØWith
tax, I got charged over $100. (No delivery charge cause he was
local.) When I called back to complain, his phone no longer worked.

Even if he would have answered the phone, I don’t think I would have paid him
again to fix it, especially since there’s never any warranty on
electronics. I doubt he would have given me my money back. AFTER I
paid upfront, I noticed he was a “last word” argumentative type of
technician. Kinda arrogant too.

Sorry to hear that, but I do not see how it is related to us.

We
can’t be responsible for what others do and how they do it.

We
may sympathize with people, but that doesn’t make our job any easier – it is
still harder as we still have to go over what others have done before us.

Hence
the requirements in the listing.

ØUltimately,
I chose you because you claim no up-front fees BEFORE you TRY to fix anything.

Well I must say you are receiving a full benefit from doing that
and frankly so are we.

We can’t usually fix a tampered board at the same cost at which
we’d fix a factory one with original failure and we know from experience it’s
much harder to convince someone in that AFTER you’ve already got paid….hence
the no upfront payment policy.

We also wish people could help avoid situations by telling when
they board was worked on previously, but as you can see they can’t always do
that.

Part of business and we have to live with it as much as those
customers have to.

> If need be, and so that I can avoid these types of disputes in
the future, I’ll consider buying a whole new board or TV.

Well
I can tell you that if buying a brand new board was an option we would not be
offering a repair service for it.

It
simply isn’t J

Brand
new TV you can always consider buying and we are not at all trying to convince
you that you should not.

For
the record we believe it has its pros and cons, but ultimately it depends on the
personal decision and ability to stay with it.

ØAt
least when something’s bought off the shelf, the store has to go out of
business at or before the warranty expires in order to break all ties to what
it has sold, all while continuing to purport that the customer’s always right
since cash is King and therefore boss.

This is a personal opinion that does not affect us as a business
entity and as such I can not give you an official position on it, but on a
personal note I’ll point out that a) standard warranty for TVs these days is 12
months and the board in reference is 7 years old - you do the math; and b) not
everyone is of the opinion that cash is King and customer is always right; some
are of the opinion that presenting rules upfront and managing to contain
business within those previously announced rules is more important than making
more cash.

I’m not the one who fixed the board before I sent it to you.
When it broke again, I didn’t ask the same person to fix it precisely because
of my concern that I might have to fix my TV every two months. Your terms
and conditions imply that you do not want ME to fix the board, not
others. What the prior technician did, and whether or not that
constitutes “tampering” with it, is beyond my lay expertise. If I have my
oil changed at Jiffy Lube, do I need to inform the Toyota dealership that I
might have tampered with my car, thus affecting its warranty? With tax, I
got charged over $100. (No delivery charge cause he was local.) When
I called back to complain, his phone no longer worked.

Even if he would have answered the phone, I don’t think I would
have paid him again to fix it, especially since there’s never any warranty on
electronics. I doubt he would have given me my money back. AFTER I
paid upfront, I noticed he was a “last word” argumentative type of
technician. Kinda arrogant too. Ultimately, I chose you because you
claim no up-front fees BEFORE you TRY to fix anything. If need be, and so
that I can avoid these types of disputes in the future, I’ll consider buying a
whole new board or TV. At least when something’s bought off the shelf,
the store has to go out of business at or before the warranty expires in order
to break all ties to what it has sold, all while continuing to purport that the
customer’s always right since cash is King and therefore boss.

Hans

From: Bobby Kolev

Sent: Monday,
August 10, 2015 7:15 PM

To:Hans Croteau

Subject: RE:
Update on case CTSR1508044024 from Coppell TV Repair LLC

ØI
simply sent you the board after it went out again, and after following your
directions.

Good. Directions is not the only thing we give though.
There are also conditions – much like in any other deal.
See listing or see below for a partial quote.

ØIt
isn’t the first time this board gets fixed. (In fact, I think there were
at least two prior fixes, but the TV worked fine for at least a couple
months. I also bought the TV used, not new.)

That is exactly what the below quoted condition addresses.

ØI did
notice a zap on the green round capacitor when I plugged it in according to
your instructions on the internet.

No big problems with that.

ØYour
internet site is evidence that you instruct your customers to determine if the
failure is caused by the Y-Main boards, as you state this is a common problem
with these 50 inchers.

A very good evidence for a very good advice.

Nothing to do with the tampered board, though. I am sure we do not instruct
customers to replace components, in fact I am sure we request the opposite.

ØI fail
to see how I could be in clear violation of your service terms.

Well here it is, straight from the listing:

“Board requirements

We ask that the board
arrives here in good physical condition and without traces of tampering. If
someone (other than us, that is) has already attempted to service the board
then please contact us with a description/pictures and do not directly place an
order. We reserve the right to refuse service to boards that have signs of
repair attempts.”

ØAs I
recall, you advertised some $75 to $80 to try to fix the board.

That
is a good, but not excellent recollection.

It
would have been excellent if you had read the listing, including the above
quoted section.
Without it you are just remembering the part that you’re interested in, but
without the other half we’re not interested in the repair.

ØI don’t
recall if there was an extra charge or not for re-delivery.

Not
sure what are you referring to, but to the best of my own knowledge there is
nothing about re-delivery either.

I am not even sure what a “re-delivery” is.

ØSo in
essence, you’re asking me for $110 to repair and deliver it back to me, which
is $25 to $30 dollars more.

No, in essence we say that if we proceed with the repair and if
we are successful then you will end up paying more.

Assuming we will be successful equalizes my statement with yours.

ØAs I
recall, you sell $100 boards with a DUD exchange of $50. Whether you want
to try to fix it, or whether you just prefer to keep it as the DUD and sell me
an already repaired $100 board with a $10 delivery cost doesn’t really matter
to me.

I
believe you have not read our sale/trade-in offer in its full either.

Please
do so.

You
will find that it contains the same clause which prevents customers from
receiving full credit for returning boards that have been tampered with.

It’s
there for a reason and that reason is not to make us money. We are VERY aware
people do not like price changes.

I
wish people were equally aware it doesn’t cost the same to repair an original
board with a failure and one that has been tampered with.

If
not that I wish people were at least aware of our requirements that are there
in plain English.

ØI’m
willing to pay you the $110 to get a working board delivered to my home,
irrespective of how that gets done.

I simply sent you the board after it went out again, and after
following your directions. It isn’t the first time this board gets
fixed. (In fact, I think there were at least two prior fixes, but the TV
worked fine for at least a couple months. I also bought the TV used, not
new.) I did notice a zap on the green round capacitor when I plugged it
in according to your instructions on the internet. Your internet site is
evidence that you instruct your customers to determine if the failure is caused
by the Y-Main boards, as you state this is a common problem with these 50
inchers. I fail to see how I could be in clear violation of your service
terms.

As I recall, you advertised some $75 to $80 to try to fix the
board. I don’t recall if there was an extra charge or not for
re-delivery. So in essence, you’re asking me for $110 to repair and
deliver it back to me, which is $25 to $30 dollars more. As I recall, you
sell $100 boards with a DUD exchange of $50. Whether you want to try to
fix it, or whether you just prefer to keep it as the DUD and sell me an already
repaired $100 board with a $10 delivery cost doesn’t really matter to me.
I’m willing to pay you the $110 to get a working board delivered to my home,
irrespective of how that gets done.

Hans S. Croteau

From: Coppell TV Repair LLC

Sent: Monday,
August 10, 2015 10:06 AM

To: Hans Croteau

Subject: Update
on case CTSR1508044024 from Coppell TV Repair LLC

Dear
Hans Croteau,Just
finished inspecting the board you sent us.

It has clear signs of a previous repair service attempt, which is in direct
violation of our requirement in the listing.

We offer flat rate repair services addressing a number of problems we have
already seen and developed know-how for addressing, allowing small room for
occasional complications which tend to get less and less over time.

Human interventions cause complications and delays in 8 out of 10 times...sure
enough we've seen enough of those to have a statistic about it too.

In those 8 out of 10 times the project ends up costing us money rather than
generating profit.

Hence the condition in the listing.

Based on that and the condition of your board here are the options we offer:

1) You can get the board back for the sole cost of the return shipping charges
($14)

2) If we proceed with the repair and the board is bad and we succeed repairing
it you will pay $110.00 including return S&H

3) If we proceed with the repair and we fail to fix the board you will have to
pay $25 plus return S&H

Friday, September 18, 2015

I'll put it right there with the clear understanding that many may call it selfish, wrong, or, likely in the case of certain family members who are not my husband, just typical:

Customers sometimes want too much while offering too little.

There, you can quote me on that.

I'll present my argument in this form of true email communication from earlier today:

Question:

"REPAIR SERVICE for power supply board 272217100569 /
2300KEG031A-F

Question, I had a tv that was doing this that you
mention------>>>>>TV powers on, possibly with an image for a
second, then the display gets dark, but the TV remains on.

Ok so I replaced the likely capacitors that have degraded over time, and I also
re-soldered a lot of the power components including around the
transformer T701 and I have a fully functional working TV with no more going
dark.

My problem is there is a slight smell coming from that Transformer and it is
hot. What is the root cause of that transformer being so hot and
eventually causing the burn out that you mention "burning around the
transformer T701 at the top left side of the board"? Did you
guys ever figure that out? Is that transformer undersized? How do you all
implement a permanent fix? Any help would be greatly
appreciated. "

Answer:

"I will answer your questions and then ask one in return.

Transformer may be getting hot for different reasons.

The most common one is an arcing between the copper wire and the leg it is soldered to which is a result of a degradation of the solder that joins them.

Yes we did figure that out.

No the transformer is not undersized.

A permanent fix to this problem is a solid joint between the copper wire and the copper track under the board.

Now for my question: do you happen to know how to transform appreciation to food?
Because neither of my kids wants appreciation for dinner.

I tried."

Your 2c?

P.S. A day after posting this we got the following question on eBay for one of our repair services:

Thursday, July 2, 2015

It's been a while since I blogged component level repair, so here's something.

A customer brought a Toshiba 42XV540U LCD TV after we've serviced the power supply PE0580A for him.

He said the TV started responding and clicking after our repair, but the display remained dark.

We agreed on returning the money for the board repair and taking the TV instead as he said he didn't want to invest more time with it.

So summarize:TV model: Toshiba 42XV540U

Failure symptoms: TV responds to power on command, fans start turning and back light comes on (we could see from the back of the TV and a glow could be seen from the front, but only in a dark room).
We could not make the TV output sound by blindly trying to change inputs; if you know how to do it perhaps you can do it , thus eliminating the main board as a top suspect.

Solution: The TV was responsive to on and off commands, which suggests the main board was good.
(failed main boards usually fail to do one or both of those operations). Plus backlight was coming up, which means the main board's processor was up and running to the point of activating the backlight.
On the other hand we couldn't get sound out of it.
We checked the voltage going to the T-CON board and it was there - 12V DC.

So the options were the main board (less likely), the T-CON or the video accelerator PE0578 (about equally likely) or the display itself (unlikely, it rarely ever fails to all dark screen).

Luckily it turned out we had eBay listings for both the T-CON and the accelerator board.

Testing with them it turned out the problem was in the accelerator board PE0578.

Knowing that we've put the bad and the good one side by side and started hunting:

Found the problem in the voltage stabilizer from 12V to 3.3V.
As you can see there was a significantly lower resistance there and, more importantly, it was the same in both directions on the bad board:

On the good board it was a good diode read - 0.5 - 0.6 kOhm in one direction and infinite or very high in the other:

(The measurement can be made on several points and there are several components there that could be causing it; there were a few inductors we removed in order to eliminate the circuits after that as well as a few diodes that were in parallel and could have been causing the shortage).

The only passive component we found to have been bad was diode D592 on the back of the board. It was fairly well shorted, having about 4-5 Ohm in both directions:

Used generic diode for replacement, such as the ones used in our repair kits for BN44-00161A power supply. Almost any diode will likely do, including even zener diodes (assuming it's properly soldered in regards to its polarity, of course).

Long story short, we traced it down to the actual DC converter/stabilizer IC (AOZ1017AI).

But since we didn't have a replacement handy and our US vendor didn't have it either (had to ether use another US vendor or our Asian vendor), we took matter in our hands and just hacked a stabilizer of our own:

The solution worked out well and the TV is presently operational.

While I don't give out everything I hope this helps someone save a buck or two :-)

Thursday, June 25, 2015

A customer reported that a returned power supply LJ92-01511A for their 50'' Philips (or Magnavox, it's used in different models from both brands) is not producing Vs after it was serviced by us.

Before returning it to here we asked them to test the board independently as we do (that is, manually power on the board and instruct it to activate Vs) to see if it behaves as it did when it was here.

Customer said he tests the board by disconnecting the sustain boards from it and turning on the TV.

The problem with that approach is that if the main board OR the plasma logic board is bad the power supply may never get instructed to turn on Vs in the first place.

So we made this video to help test the board in standalone mode:

Of course like everything else choosing one alternative over another has its drawbacks too.

Testing without load like this is not an ultimate proof the board is functional since it may fail to operate when loaded. This does indeed happen sometimes, but in our experience it is rare enough to justify saving the overhead of a full blown test.

If a board behaves differently with and without a load then a more careful inspection under load is clearly needed.

And still more often than not the problem would turn out to be in the load and not the power supply - i.e. shorted sustain board in plasma TVs or main board in the LCD/LEDs.

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

After posting the email exchange with an eager wannabe-customer last week I got a few emails from alert readers.

Most showed agreement, some disagreement and the really good ones, in my opinion, said that right or wrong, it is silly of me to post such things on the web because Americans are raised to believe that customer is king and they see as a personal threat anyone who applies critical thinking to that belief.

I am not trying to start a revolution here.

Customer is a customer and without customers there will be business, but that does not mean that one has to take all the crap customers have to offer.

Here's two more email exchanges that happened during the course of the last evening:

Question 1.1:A friend gave me a
Vizio P50 HDTV20A which he said the picture just went out on. I
opened up the tv and on what I believe is considered the Y-Main board there are
two resistors or capacitors (I'm not electronically inclined) that are side by
side nearest the Y -Buffer boards that are heating up and
burning. The circuit board around the leads on these components has
turned brown and of course that god awful smell of burning circuit board was
filling the room. My question, is this something which can be
repaired by your company? What could be the root cause of these
components heating up to the melting point? Is this a lost
cause? I just want to see if the thing is repairable before I ship
the boards to you. If it would help I can take a picture of the
board and the two components. I would appreciate any guidance you
can give me here.

Answer 1.1:Which is the Y-Main board?

This model uses several very different ones.Question 1.2:

I really appreciate you responding back to my
question. The board which I am seeing the two components that are heating
up is located on the left side of the television if you are standing behind
it. From what I have read on your site and else where that is why I
called this the Y main board but that terminology may not be correct.
Also, this board connects to the Y Buffer (?) boards on the left hand side of
the television. In the hopes that you can tell me whether this board is
repairable I am attaching a picture of the board along with a close up of the
two components that are heating up. My main concern is what would cause these
components to heat up like this? Is there something I can do to help you
diagnose whether I need to ;send other boards?

Answer 1.2:99.9% certain your top buffer board is burned.Your Y-Main board is most likely also affected and will need to be serviced.

Can’t say with certainty yet, but your most likely solution would be to have the buffer replaced and the Y-Main repaired.

Proper way to do it is to have both top and bottom buffers replaced with brand new ones. That would be $180 and with Y-main repair at $70 it becomes too expensive for most people. But it’s the only proper way to repair it.It’s expensive because Samsung has run out of buffer boards and does not seem to be producing new ones again.

The popular way now is to replace the top buffer with a serviced one for $70 and Y-main repair for another $70.

Search at our site for LJ92-01490A and LJ92-01491A and make sure to read both.

It is possible it may be worse than that, but this is the most common case.----

On Wed, Apr 8, 2015 at 6:58 PM, Coppell TV Repair wrote:Dear Greg Gillum,This message contains shipping instructions for your defective board(s) you wish us to service.Please read carefully and do what we ask to ensure the best experience for both yourself and us.1. IDENTIFICATIONa) Sender's email is g---------m@gmail.com.b) Sender's phone is 6------6.c) Please initial your board(s) with a marker. It can help resolve a confusion here or in a video proof that the board is working (if and when applicable).d) Your message to us is: --------------I have 2 toshiba LCD TVs that recently went bad after a lightning storm the other night. Model 46ux600u has no power whatsoever - its main fuse is intact and I can detect power at the capacitors. The power supply board does not seem to be available any longer. Model 47zv650u lights an LED when its plugged in then begins a repeating series of clicks as if its trying to turn on but never does. What do you suggest? Are these both likely power supply boards? I've not taken the back panel off the 47zv650u yet as I don't know what to look for anyway.